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Information about Fictional Country

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Map of the Land of Oz, the fictional country in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
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Map of the north-west of Middle-earth, a fictional continent containing countries where some of the stories of author J. R. R. Tolkien take place.
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Map of the fictional island of Sodor used in the Thomas the Tank Engine stories
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Fictitious countries used in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
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A guidebook produced about the fictional country Molvanîa


A fictional country is a country that is made up for fictional stories, and does not exist in real life. Fictional lands appear most commonly as settings or subjects of literature or of movies.

Fictional countries appear commonly in stories of early science fiction (or scientific romance). Such countries supposedly form part of the normal Earth landscape although not located in a normal atlas. Later similar tales often took place on fictional planets.

Jonathan Swift's protagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, visited various strange places. Edgar Rice Burroughs placed adventures of Tarzan in areas in Africa that, at the time, remained mostly unknown to the West and to the East. Isolated islands with strange creatures and/or customs enjoyed great popularity in these authors' times. When Western explorers had surveyed most of the Earth's surface, this option was lost to Western culture. Thereafter fictional utopian and dystopian societies tended to spring up on other planets or in space, whether in human colonies or in alien societies originating elsewhere.

Superhero and secret agent comics and some thrillers also use fictional countries on Earth as backdrops. Most of these countries exist only for a single story, a TV-series episode or an issue of a comic book. There are notable exceptions, such as Marvel Comics Latveria and DC Comics Qurac and Bialya.

Purpose

Fictional countries often deliberately resemble or even represent some real-world country or present a utopia or dystopia for commentary. Variants of the country's name sometimes make it clear what country they really have in mind. (Compare semi-fictional countries below.) By using a fictional country instead of a real one, authors can exercise greater freedom in creating characters, events, and settings, while at the same time presenting a vaguely familiar locale that readers can recognize. A fictional country leaves the author unburdened by the restraints of a real nation's actual history, politics, and culture, and can thus allow for greater scope in plot construction.

Writers may create an archetypal fictional "Eastern European", "Middle Eastern", "Asian", "African" or "Latin American" country for the purposes of their story.

Such countries often embody stereotypes about their regions. For example, inventors of a fictional Eastern European country will typically describe it as a former or current Soviet satellite state, or with a suspense story about a royal family; if pre-20th century, it will likely resemble Ruritania or feature copious vampires and other supernatural phenomena. A fictional Middle Eastern state often lies somewhere on the Arabian peninsula, has substantial oil-wealth and problems with radical Islam and will have either a sultan or a mentally-unstable dictator as a ruler. A fictional Latin American country will typically project images of a banana republic beset by constant revolutions, military dictatorships, and coups d'état. A fictional African state will suffer from poverty, civil war and disease.

Modern writers usually do not try to pass off their stories as facts. However, in the early 18th century George Psalmanazar passed himself off as a prince from the island of Formosa (present-day Taiwan) and wrote a fictional description about it to convince his sponsors.

Some larcenous entrepreneurs have also invented fictional countries solely for the purpose of defrauding people. In the 1820s, Gregor MacGregor sold land in the invented country of Poyais. In modern times, the Dominion of Melchizedek and the Kingdom of EnenKio have been accused of this. Many varied financial scams can play out under the aegis of a fictional country, including selling passports and travel documents, and setting up fictional banks and companies with the seeming imprimatur of full government backing.

Fictional countries have also been created for polling purposes. When polled in April of 2004, 10% of British people believed that the fictional country of Luvania would soon join the European Union.[1] In a similar event, two thirds of Hungarians polled in March of 2007 demanded that absolutely no asylum be granted to immigrants from the fictional country of Piresa.[2]

Questionable cases

Countries from stories, myths, legends, that some people have believed to actually exist.

Books

: Excellent book; includes details of inhabitants, government structure, and sightseeing tips. Does not cover off-planet locations.
  • Brian Stableford: The Dictionary of Science Fiction Places

See also

References

1. ^ Haines, Lester (2004-04-29). Brits welcome Luvania to EU. The Register.
2. ^ Haines, Lester (2007-03-21). Hungarians demand ejection of Piresan immigrants. The Register.

External links

In political geography and international politics, a country is a political division of a geographical entity, a sovereign territory, most commonly associated with the notions of state or nation and government.
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Literature literally "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter) as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary, or works of art, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and non-fiction, drama and poetry.
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Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects.
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worldwide view of the subject.
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Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi
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Scientific romance is a bygone name for what is now commonly known as science fiction. The term is most associated with the early science fiction of the United Kingdom, and the earliest noteworthy use of the term scientific romance
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EARTH was a short-lived Japanese vocal trio which released 6 singles and 1 album between 2000 and 2001. Their greatest hit, their debut single "time after time", peaked at #13 in the Oricon singles chart.
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An atlas is a collection of maps or manifolds, traditionally bound into book form, but also found in multimedia formats. As well as geographic features and political boundaries, many often feature geopolitical, social, religious and economic statistics.
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Planets in science fiction are fictional planets that appear in various media, especially those of the science fiction genre, as story-settings or depicted locations. [1]

History


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Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Irish cleric, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella
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Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), officially Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships
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Edgar Rice Burroughs

Born: September 1 1875(1875--)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died: March 19 1950 (aged 76)
Encino, California, U.S.
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Tarzan, a fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first appeared in the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes, and then in twenty-three sequels. He is the son of a British Lord and Lady who were marooned on the West coast of Africa by mutineers.
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Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30,221,532 km² (11,668,545 sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area, and 20.4% of the total land area.
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Western culture or Western civilization is a term used to generally refer to most of the cultures of European origin and most of their descendants. It comprises the broad, geographically based, heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs (such as religious
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Utopia (from Greek: οὐ no, and τόπος, place, i.e. "no place" or "place that does not exist," as well as "perfect place") is a fictional island near the coast of the Atlantic Ocean written about by Sir Thomas More as the
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dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, alternatively, cacotopia,[1] kakotopia or anti-utopia) is a fictional society that is the antithesis of utopia.
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planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion in its core, and has cleared its neighbouring region of
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superhero (also known as a super hero) is fictional character "of unprecedented, physical prowess dedicated to acts of derring-do in the public interest.” [1]
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A comic book is a magazine or book containing sequential art in the form of a narrative. Comic books are often called comics for short. Although the term implies otherwise, the subject matter in comic books is not necessarily humorous, and in fact it is often serious and
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The thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, and television. It includes numerous, often overlapping sub-genres.

Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more-powerful and better-equipped villains.
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Marvel Comics

A subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment
Founded 1939 by Martin Goodman, as Timely Comics
Headquarters 417 5th Avenue, New York City, New York

Key people Joe Quesada, Editor-in-chief
Dan Buckley, Publisher, C.O.O.
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Latveria is a fictional nation in the Marvel Universe. It is an isolated country ruled by the villainous Doctor Doom, supposedly located in the Banat region. It is surrounded by the Carpathians, and also borders the fictional Symkaria (to the south), home of Silver Sable.
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DC Comics

Subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.
Founded 1934, by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson (as National Allied Publications)
Headquarters 1700 Broadway, New York City, New York

Key people Paul Levitz (President and Publisher)
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Qurac is a fictional country in the DC universe. It is a tiny Middle Eastern country on the Persian Gulf, wedged between Iraq and Kuwait. Qurac is often used when DC has need of a terrorist state in the Middle East.
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Bialya is a fictional country appearing in many comic books published by DC Comics. It was notably featured in issues of Justice League International as written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis.
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archetype is a generic, idealized model of a person, object, or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned, or emulated. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior.
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Stereotypes are ideas about people of other particular groups, based primarily on membership in that group. They may be positive or negative prejudicial, and may be used to justify certain discriminatory behaviors. Some people consider all stereotypes to be negative.
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Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (abbreviated USSR, Russian: (help info ) ; tr.
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Satellite state is a political term that refers to a country which is formally independent, but under heavy influence or control by another country. The term was coined by analogy to stellar objects orbiting a larger object, such as planets revolving around the sun, and is used
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twentieth century of the Common Era began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000, according to the Gregorian calendar. Some historians consider the era from about 1914 to 1991 to be the Short Twentieth Century.
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